A government watchdog report issued Thursday calls for greater congressional oversight of the Navy's carrier-based unmanned aircraft program, and cites other "programmatic risks" related to the budget and schedule. The Navy is pursuing the program in a way that will limit the ability of Congress to hold it accountable for meeting goals on cost, schedule and performance, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said. Unmanned, carrier-based aircraft are considered the next phase of naval aviation, a crucial component as the service seeks to stretch limited dollars and still maintain a worldwide presence.

For older generations of spouses, mothers and other family caregivers of severely disabled veterans, the startling feature of the Family Caregiver Program that Congress enacted in 2010 was its exclusivity. The unprecedented package of caregiver benefits includes training to help ensure patient safety; cash stipends to partially compensate for caregiver time and effort; caregiver health coverage if they have none, and guaranteed periods of respite to protect against burn out. The comprehensive package, however, isn't available to most family members who are primary caregivers to severely ill and injured veterans.

The development of a $9.1 billion computer system, intended to be the brains of the SSN-21 Seawolf attack submarine, could be delayed if the Navy doesn't overcome problems posed by the system's complicated software, a government agency has reported. The General Accounting Office reported last month that the Navy's AN/BSY-2 computer system, a vastly complex and costly array of 200 microprocessors, sensors and software designed to detect and locate targets and guide weapons once they are launched, "faces significant challenges to meet the performance requirements within the tight time frames and budget established."

The Navy could look to the commercial shipbuilding industry for ways to reduce problems in the construction and delivery of U.S. warships, a government watchdog report says. Commercial ship buyers "establish clear lines of accountability" and employ roaming patrols and impromptu inspections to spot problems before a ship is delivered, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a November report. In response, the Navy agreed or partially agreed with several recommendations in the report.

The General Accounting Office said Thursday that Amtrak has deteriorated so badly it cannot continue to operate a viable national passenger train network without substantial increases in federal and state funding. Amtrak's new president, Thomas M. Downs, giving his first congressional testimony, said he agreed with the GAO's findings. In three months on the job, he said he had found deteriorating equipment, late trains and overworked employees. "We are now, as America's railroad, promising a service we can't deliver," Downs told the panel.

When the Navy bought 80 new Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems to help protect its ships from missile attacks, it also bought a $546,261 service warranty to protect the Navy from excessive repair costs. During the 12-month warranty period, the Navy reported 251 failures on the anti-missile systems, but the contractor paid none of the repair costs. The warranty stated the company was responsible for repairs only if the Navy experienced more than 5,238 failures. The Defense Department spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on warranties for its weapons systems, but does a poor job determining whether they are worth the price or ensuring that they are properly used, according to a congressional investigation.

The Navy needs to do a better job of setting realistic budgets, the investigative arm of Congress said. The Defense Department needs to significantly strengthen its monitoring of Navy shipbuilding programs and place stricter requirements on shipyards to rein in cost overruns that are now running into the billions of dollars, the Government Accounting Office said in a report Thursday. A report by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, comes during an intense budget season -- when the shipbuilding lobby is asking lawmakers to increase government ship purchases even as the Navy says it needs $1.37 billion between 2006 and 2010 to pay for finishing shipbuilding jobs that congress thought were already paid up. The Navy, for example, says it will need $870 million between 2006 and 2010 to finish the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier being built in Newport News.

American taxpayers will pay at least $3 billion more for a new class of attack submarines because Congress agreed to allow Newport News Shipbuilding to build some of them, a new report says. Congress's 1995 decision to overturn existing Pentagon policy and share the sub work between Newport News and Electric Boat of Groton, Conn., will make it impossible to achieve the new class's chief goal: A sub that is cheaper and more capable than the cutting-edge Seawolf sub is today, the General Accounting Office said in a report it will release publicly next week.

With anticipated pilot shortages looming and surveys that show valued pilots may leave the force because they are flying less, the Air Force could reduce the number of positions it now says need to be filled only by pilots, according to a congressional study. Congress' investigative arm, the General Accounting Office, estimated that of about 23,300 jobs the Air Force says needs to be filled by someone with a pilot's rating, a quarter of those posts do not require the ability to fly. The study, which involved a random sample of Air Force records, included 68 of the 238 positions at the Pentagon and 75 of the 352 slots at the Tactical Air Command Headquarters at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton.

The Pentagon, eager to spend the fat military budgets of the Reagan era, bought billions of dollars of spare parts that will never be used, the General Accounting Office reported Tuesday. In their rush to spend, defense officials inflated their requirements and awarded contracts for parts they knew were not needed, the GAO told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. "Unrequired" parts accounted for one-third of the military's inventory in 1988 - $34 billion out of a total $103 billion.

A government watchdog report issued Thursday calls for greater congressional oversight of the Navy's carrier-based unmanned aircraft program, and cites other "programmatic risks" related to the budget and schedule. The Navy is pursuing the program in a way that will limit the ability of Congress to hold it accountable for meeting goals on cost, schedule and performance, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said. Unmanned, carrier-based aircraft are considered the next phase of naval aviation, a crucial component as the service seeks to stretch limited dollars and still maintain a worldwide presence.

- The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford will continue to experience problems after it joins the fleet because key systems lack reliability, including those that allow fighter jets to launch and land, a government watchdog group reported Thursday. Responding to the report, the Defense Department agreed on the need for some cost and planning reforms in the Ford program, but said the report goes too far in saying Ford will face "significant operational limitations" once commissioned. It is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy in February 2016.

- The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford will continue to experience problems after it joins the fleet because key systems lack reliability, including those that allow fighter jets to launch and land, a government watchdog group reported Thursday. Responding to the report, the Defense Department agreed on the need for some cost and planning reforms in the Ford program, but said the report goes too far in saying Ford will face "significant operational limitations" once commissioned. It is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy in February 2016.

WASHINGTON - Camouflage combat uniforms in the armed forces may be getting a new look, or at least the same look across all four branches. Congressional efforts to whittle down the 10 different camouflage uniforms in use to just one are gaining momentum, a move that could save millions of dollars while affecting future contracts for the 23 manufacturers across the country that benefit from the proliferation of designs. Before lawmakers left town last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a fiscal 2014 defense spending bill, S. 1429, that would halt funding for new patterns starting Oct. 1 unless all services agree to use a single design for a given terrain.

The Pentagon is postponing ship deployments, deferring major projects and planning to furlough thousands of Defense Department employees. Could there also be a repeat of the 2005 base-closing round that downsized the military in Hampton Roads? That prospect of another BRAC commission, which stands for Base Realignment and Closure, doesn't seem likely in the short term. But the potential of a BRAC round in 2014 or beyond has prompted Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Westmoreland, to launch the equivalent of a preemptive congressional strike.

Next year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office is due to report on the Navy's plan to move an aircraft carrier to Florida, and Virginia Sen. Jim Webb wants to make sure it addresses a few questions – 23, to be exact. Webb, who opposes the move, sent a letter Thursday to Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro asking that the questions be incorporated into the GAO's inquiry to the Navy. Congress should receive the report by February 2012. The Navy's plan to homeport an aircraft carrier at Naval Station Mayport near Jacksonville has raised the hackles of Virginia leaders.

The V-22 Osprey aircraft looks increasingly like a $24 billion turkey, the General Accounting Office said in a report released Wednesday. The plane, which takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like a jet, is over budget, overweight and overly risky for taxpayers, the GAO said. The Osprey is a rare bird - a military aircraft the Pentagon does not want to build. It has tried to cancel the plane for two years in a row. "We do not consider the program to be affordable," Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood said in a recent letter to Rep. Bill Dickinson, R-Ala.

Two years after the hurricane, the federal coverage program still needs better oversight, a new report says. The federal government does a poor job in overseeing the National Flood Insurance Program and has yet to fully enact the reforms mandated by Congress last year, the Government Accountability Office reported Tuesday. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found the federal agency responsible for the insurance program can't determine the general accuracy of insurance claims because it did not use a statistically valid method for sampling them.

— Maintaining an aircraft carrier at Naval Station Mayport in Florida should not be a problem if the Navy decides to transfer one from Hampton Roads, a new study says. The U.S. Government Accountability Office on Tuesday issued the report, which was commissioned by Congress to provide more context in the long-running debate over where the Navy should base its East Coast carriers. It concludes that private ship repair firms in northeast Florida "will likely be able to support the maintenance requirements of a nuclear aircraft carrier if one is homeported at Naval Station Mayport in 2019 as the Navy plans.

WASHINGTON — Virginia Sens. Jim Webb and Mark Warner, citing a new report critical of the Navy's process for estimating the cost of maintaining and modernizing its shipyards, are calling on the Navy to get those costs under control before spending $1 billion to move an aircraft carrier from Norfolk to Mayport, Fla. The new report — the product of a year-long study by the Government Accountability Office — says the Navy has...